The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now

[box type=”info”]This post was originally posted on mashable.com [/box]

An encryption flaw called the Heartbleed bug is already being called one of the biggest security threats the Internet has ever seen. The bug has affected many popular websites and services — ones you might use every day, like Gmail and Facebook — and could have quietly exposed your sensitive account information (such as passwords and credit card numbers) over the past two years.

But it hasn’t always been clear which sites have been affected. Mashable reached out to various companies included on a long list of websites that could potentially have the flaw. Below, we’ve rounded up the responses from some of the most popular social, email, banking and commerce sites on the web.

Some Internet companies that were vulnerable to the bug have already updated their servers with a security patch to fix the issue. This means you’ll need to go in and change your passwords immediately for these sites. Even that is no guarantee that your information wasn’t already compromised, but there’s no indication that hackers knew about the exploit before this week.

Although changing your password regularly is always good practice, if a site or service hasn’t yet patched the problem, your information will still be vulnerable.

Was it affected?

Is there a patch?

Do you need to change your password?

What did they say?

Facebook

Unclear

Yes

Yes

“We added protections for Facebook’s implementation of OpenSSL before this issue was publicly disclosed. We haven’t detected any signs of suspicious account activity, but we encourage people to … set up a unique password.”

LinkedIn

No

No

No

“We didn’t use the offending implementation of OpenSSL in www.linkedin.com or www.slideshare.net. As a result, HeartBleed does not present a risk to these web properties.”

Tumblr

Yes

Yes

Yes

“We have no evidence of any breach and, like most networks, our team took immediate action to fix the issue.”

Twitter

Unclear

Unclear

Unclear

Twitter wrote that OpenSSL “is widely used across the internet and at Twitter. We were able to determine that [our] servers were not affected by this vulnerability. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”

*Google said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry.

Microsoft

No

No

No

Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass.

Yahoo

Yes

Yes

Yes

“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it… and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now.” Yahoo Homepage, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Food, Yahoo Tech, Flickr and Tumblr were patched. More patches to come, Yahoo says.

Email

Was it affected?

Is there a patch?

Do you need to change your password?

What did they say?

AOL

No

No

No

AOL told Mashable it was not running the vulnerable version of the software.

Gmail

Yes

Yes

Yes*

“We have assessed the SSL vulnerability and applied patches to key Google services.”

*Google said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry.

Hotmail / Outlook

No

No

No

Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass.

Yahoo Mail

Yes

Yes

Yes

“As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it… and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now.”

“The vast majority of our services were not impacted and our users can continue to shop securely on our marketplace.”

GoDaddy

Yes

Yes

Yes

“We’ve been updating GoDaddy services that use the affected OpenSSL version.” Full Statement

PayPal

No

No

No

“Your PayPal account details were not exposed in the past and remain secure.” Full Statement

Target

No

No

No

“[We] launched a comprehensive review of all external facing aspects of Target.com… and do not currently believe that any external-facing aspects of our sites are impacted by the OpenSSL vulnerability.”

Banks and Brokerages

Was it affected?

Is there a patch?

Do you need to change your password?

What did they say?

Bank of America

No

No

No

“We’re currently taking precautions and steps to protect customer data from this threat and have no reason to believe any customer data has been compromised in the past.”

Chase

No

No

No

“These sites don’t use the encryption software that is vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug.”

E*Trade

No

No

No

E*Trade is still investigating.

Fidelity

No

No

No

“We have multiple layers of security in place to protect our customer sites and services.”

PNC

No

No

No

“We have tested our online and mobile banking systems and confirmed that they are not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug.”

Schwab

No

No

No

“Efforts to date have not detected this vulnerability on Schwab.com or any of our online channels.”

Scottrade

No

No

No

“Scottrade does not use the affected version of OpenSSL on any of our client-facing platforms.”

TD Ameritrade

No

No

No

TD Ameritrade “doesn’t use the versions of openSSL that were vulnerable.”

TD Bank

No

No

No

“We’re currently taking precautions and steps to protect customer data from this threat and have no reason to believe any customer data has been compromised in the past.”

U.S. Bank

No

No

No

“We do not use OpenSSL for customer-facing, Internet banking channels, so U.S. Bank customer data is NOT at risk.”

Wells Fargo

No

No

No

No reason provided.

Government and Taxes

Was it affected?

Is there a patch?

Do you need to change your password?

What did they say?

1040.com

No

No

No

“We’re not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, as we do not use OpenSSL.”

FileYour Taxes.com

No

No

No

“We continuously patch our servers to keep them updated. However, the version we use was not affected by the issue, so no action was taken.”

H&R Block

Unclear

No

Unclear

“We are reviewing our systems and currently have found no risk to client data from this issue.”

Healthcare .gov

Unclear

Unclear

Unclear

Healthcare.gov has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Intuit (TurboTax)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Turbotax “has examined its systems and has secured TurboTax to protect against the “Heartbleed” bug.” Full Statement

IRS

Unclear

Unclear

Unclear

“The IRS continues to accept tax returns as normal … and systems continue operating and are not affected by this bug. We are not aware of any security vulnerabilities related to this situation.”

Other

Was it affected?

Is there a patch?

Do you need to change your password?

What did they say?

Dropbox

Yes

Yes

Yes

On Twitter: “We’ve patched all of our user-facing services & will continue to work to make sure your stuff is always safe.”

Evernote

No

No

No

“Evernote’s service, Evernote apps, and Evernote websites … all use non-OpenSSL implementations of SSL/TLS to encrypt network communications.” Full Statement

LastPass

Yes

Yes

Yes

“Though LastPass employs OpenSSL, we have multiple layers of encryption to protect our users and never have access to those encryption keys.”

Netflix

Unclear

Unclear

Unclear

“Like many companies, we took immediate action to assess the vulnerability and address it. We are not aware of any customer impact.”

OKCupid

Yes

Yes

Yes

“We, like most of the Internet, were stunned that such a serious bug has existed for so long and was so widespread.”

SoundCloud

Yes

Yes

Yes

“We will be signing out everyone from their SoundCloud accounts … and when you sign back in, the fixes we’ve already put in place will take effect.”

Spark Networks (JDate, Christian Mingle)

No

No

No

Sites do not use OpenSSL.

Wunderlist

Yes

Yes

Yes

“You’ll have to simply log back into Wunderlist. We also strongly recommend that you reset your password for Wunderlist.” Full Statement